Aluminum alloys are frequently used to produce light-weight components, such as structural components or passenger compartment components in passenger transportation vehicles such as aircraft, rail-borne vehicles or watercraft. In these applications, aluminum alloys are typically melted and then transformed into a target component using modern primary shaping methods, such as casting methods, for example die casting, sand casting or permanent mold casting methods or thixocasting or rheocasting, but also by way of traditional methods based on machining suitable semi-finished products (subtractive methods), or increasingly by way of direct product generation methods (additive methods). Direct product generation methods are considered to be those methods that are used to produce parts directly, “in a straightforward manner,” which is to say without further thermomechanical process steps, and in the desired final contour and that result in components having load-bearing capacities in such a way that they can assume the mechanical-technological functions of “normally” produced components, which is to say components that are produced in the standard manner. After the thus directly generated aluminum material has solidified, the target component has a cast structure having special strength properties and residual component stresses defined by the alloy chemistry and cooling conditions. If the material has solidified sufficiently quickly, the strength and residual component stress of the resulting components can frequently be improved immediately thereafter by way of a precipitation hardening step, which is also referred to as aging. However, such rapid cooling, which is desirable since it creates advantages, is generally prevented or impeded by economically driven process parameters.
Aluminum alloys, in particular aluminum alloys comprising scandium, are known from DE 10 2007 018 123 A1, DE 103 52 932 A1, U.S. Pat. No. 3,619,181 A, EP 0 238 550 A, EP 1 111 078 A2 or DE 100 248 594 A1, for example. While, in principle, simultaneously adding scandium (Sc) and zirconium (Zr) to aluminum alloys is considered to particularly increase strength, this addition generally results in the formation of intermetallic dispersoids of the type Al3X (metal-physically also referred to as L12, DO22 and DO23 phases due to the stoichiometry thereof) which are no longer coherent, due to the size thereof of >50 nm, due to delayed solidification conditions. Given the low solubility of Sc and Zr in the aluminum material at room temperature, insufficiently rapid solidification of these AlSc or AlScZr alloys results in the premature, above-described undesirable phase formation, and thus in worsening of the achievable material properties, in particular in lower strength. The negative base material properties established thereby cannot be corrected by way of conventional heat post-treatment, such as solution heat treatment and precipitation hardening.